‘And if you disagree?’ I asked Steapa as we rode northwards.
‘We beat the bastard somewhere else. But I’m glad to be out of that lot,’ he jerked his grizzled head to indicate Æthelstan’s army. ‘Too many bloody churchmen and young lordlings who think they shit lavender instead of turds.’
Æthelstan would be marching north behind us, but he would not cross the Dee unless Steapa assured him the battlefield was a good choice. If Steapa disliked the land between the streams on Wirhealum then Æthelstan would destroy the Roman bridge across the Dee, leave Ceaster to its fate and move eastwards to find another place to confront the invaders.
‘It’ll be a bloody business wherever we fight the bastards,’ Steapa said.
‘It will.’
‘I never liked fighting Norsemen. Mad buggers.’
‘I don’t suppose they like fighting you either,’ I said.
‘And the Irish Norse use arrows, I’m told.’
‘They do,’ Finan said curtly.
‘So do we,’ I put in.
‘But Anlaf will have more archers,’ Finan said. ‘They use bows a lot. They stand the archers behind the shield wall and make the sky rain arrows. So heads down, shields up.’
‘Jesus,’ Steapa grumbled.
I knew what he was thinking. He no more wanted to stand in another shield wall than I did. For all our long lives we had been fighting; fighting the Welsh, fighting other Saxons, fighting the Scots, fighting the Danes, fighting the Norse, and now fighting an alliance of Scots, Danes and Norsemen. It would be grim.
The Christians tell us we must have peace, that we should melt our swords to make ploughshares, yet I have yet to see a Christian king light the furnace to melt the battle-steel. When we fought Anlaf, whether it was on Wirhealum or deeper inside Mercia, we would also face Constantin’s men and Owain of Strath Clota’s warriors, and almost all of them were Christians. The priests on both sides would wail to their nailed god, calling down his help, screaming for vengeance and victory, and none of it made sense to me. Æthelstan could kneel to his god, but Constantin would be kneeling too, as would Owain. Did their nailed god really care who ruled Britain? I brooded on that as we hurried north, following the Roman road through intermittent showers that blew chill from the Welsh hills. And what of the Welsh? I was sure Anlaf had sent emissaries to Hywel and to the lesser Welsh kings, and they had reason enough to dislike Æthelstan who had forced them to bow the knee and pay tribute. Yet I suspected Hywel would do nothing. He might not like the Saxons, but he knew what horrors would descend on his country if Æthelstan released his army into the hills. Hywel would let the Norse and the Scots fight his old enemy, and if they won then he would seize what land he could, and if Æthelstan won, Hywel would smile across the frontier and quietly build up his strength.
‘You’re thinking, lord,’ Finan said accusingly. ‘I know that face.’
‘Best not to think,’ Steapa said, ‘it only leads to trouble.’
‘I was wondering why we’re fighting,’ I said.
‘Because the filthy bastards want our country,’ Steapa retorted. ‘So we have to kill them.’
‘Did they all fight before we Saxons came?’ I asked.
‘Of course they did,’ Steapa insisted, ‘stupid bastards fought each other, then fought the Romans and once they’d gone, they fought us. And if they ever beat us, which they won’t, they’ll fight each other again.’
‘So it never ends.’
‘Christ,’ Finan said, ‘you’re gloomy!’
I was thinking of the shield wall, that place of pure terror. As a child, listening to the songs in the hall, we only want to grow up to be warriors, to wear the helmet and the mail, to have a sword men fear, to wear the rings thick on our forearms, to hear the poets sing of our prowess. But the truth was horror, blood, shit, men screaming, weeping, and dying. The songs don’t tell of that, they make it sound glorious. I had stood in too many shield walls and now rode to determine whether I would stand in one more, the biggest yet and, I feared, the worst.
Wyrd bið ful ãræd.
We reached Ceaster late the following afternoon. Leof was relieved to see us, then aghast when I told him the battle might yet be fought on Wirhealum. ‘It can’t be!’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘What if he wins?’
‘We die,’ I said brutally. ‘But the decision isn’t made yet.’
‘What if the king chooses to fight elsewhere?’
‘Then you have to hold Ceaster against a siege till we relieve you.’
‘But—’ he began.
‘You have family here?’ Steapa demanded curtly.
‘A wife, three children.’
‘You want them raped? Enslaved?’
‘No!’
‘Then you hold the city.’
Next morning, still in a persistent drizzle, we rode north towards Anlaf’s chosen field. Steapa was still angry at Leof. ‘Yellow-bellied fool,’ he grumbled.
‘He can be replaced.’
‘He’d better be.’ He rode in silence for a while, then grinned at me. ‘Was good to see Benedetta!’ He had met Benedetta in Ceaster’s great hall.
‘You remember her?’
‘Of course I remember her! You can’t forget a woman like that. I always felt sorry for her. She shouldn’t have been a slave.’
‘She isn’t now.’
‘But you’re not married to her?’
‘Italian superstition,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘So long as she shares your bed, who cares?’
‘And you?’ I asked. I knew his wife had died.
‘I don’t sleep alone, lord,’ he said, then nodded ahead to the bridge that crossed the larger stream, close to where the smaller joined it. ‘That’s the stream?’ he asked.
‘You can
